Paul Gascoigne: a player Lazio and Tottenham have in common

It was ice cream for breakfast and beer for lunch… but as a player Gazza was beautiful!

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UPDATED:

06:48 GMT, 20 September 2012

Tottenham and Lazio will be forever entwined by one man and the clubs had barely been drawn to meet for the first time when thoughts turned to Paul Gascoigne.

Lazio's general manager Maurizio Manzini quickly proposed that Gazza should be guest of honour at both Europa League ties, unaware that this is perhaps easier said than done.

The 45-year-old is tackling health problems and addictions and has declined an invitation to attend Thursday's game at White Hart Lane for 'personal reasons'.

Comic: Paul Gascoigne wore these funny glasses at a press conference

Cult figure: Paul Gascoigne spent time at both Lazio and Tottenham Hotspur

It is a bitter-sweet tale of brilliance and self-destruction, sprinkled with what-ifs.

Next week marks 20 years since Gascoigne's Lazio debut. What if, indeed.

'Italy in the Nineties was the No 1 league to test your ability and Paul had everything to be a success out there,' recalled his friend Glenn Roeder.

'He had the close control and vision. He made goals and he scored goals.

'In a way, he was made for Italian football. The big problem was the injuries.'

Gascoigne's 6.7million transfer was wrecked by a knee injury in the 1991 FA Cup final, only to be hastily revived because Spurs needed the money.

Complex negotiations ensued and a new fee of 5.5m was agreed, complete with expensive insurance to cover the worst case scenario, which Gazza flirted with when he cracked the knee-cap on his injured knee in a Newcastle nightclub.

The original transfer had included Roeder, once Gascoigne's team-mate at Newcastle, who had remained close and had agreed to move his family to Rome to provide a steadying influence.

Roeder's playing career was coming to an end at Watford and he planned a sabbatical to study coaching in Italy while allowing Gazza to lodge at the family home.

Folklore: Gascoigne only managed to score six goals during his time in Rome

Folklore: Gascoigne only managed to score six goals during his time in Rome

This idea was short-lived. It collapsed after the injury but the pair did spend a fortnight in Rome in August 1991 as Gascoigne got to know Lazio.

They saw a friendly against Real Madrid and travelled with the squad to a cup tie against Andria, a lower league club from a town on the Adriatic coast.

'Two things leapt out,' said Roeder. 'At the end of lunch, the captain waited for everyone to finish eating before asking the manager, Dino Zoff, if the players could retire to their rooms for an afternoon nap.

'Gazza also found it strange that players were offered a glass of wine with the meal. Whether this was culture or to help them relax and sleep, I don't know. Gazza declined the wine and ordered a coffee.

'After the game, when they'd won, the players were back at the hotel drinking coffee and Gazza couldn't get his head around this. He's thinking: “Now the lads should be drinking wine, celebrating”.'

Italian football had a reputation for supreme professionalism. The players arrived on time for training twice daily and listened respectfully to any instructions.

'All of this was good for Paul,' said Roeder. 'He was a wonderful example to young players at the training ground because he loved his football.

'At Rangers, he'd drive to Ibrox the day before a game and demand to play head-tennis against Walter Smith and Archie Knox in the home dressing room.

Today: Presently Gascoigne is struggling with health problems

'They'd pull a net across the middle of the dressing room, it is so big, and the trick was to land the ball in the corners and make it ricochet under the benches.

'The problems Gazza had in his life came when football wasn't there for him. When training wasn't long enough or he was injured and when he finished.'

As the Premier League launched in 1992, Channel 4 bought the rights to Serie A and more than three million tuned in for Lazio's first game against Sampdoria. Gascoigne was injured (somewhat inevitably) but made his debut a fortnight later against Genoa.

He secured his place in Lazio folklore in November 1992, heading a late equaliser in a derby against Roma.

Fans from all teams embraced his boozy image. They threw Mars Bars, he ate them.

He took a shine to pranks involving a tunnel which plunged the team bus into complete darkness as it exited the Olympic Stadium.

Once he mocked up a road crash and sprawled next to his scooter to shock Zoff, who always occupied the front seat of the bus. Other times he would appear alongside his manager totally naked with daylight flooding back into the bus as it emerged from the tunnel.

'I loved that boy,' said Zoff once. 'He was a genius, an artist but he made me tear my hair out.

'The pity was we saw the beauty he was capable of only so rarely. He destroyed that beauty with his drinking and his eating.

'He ate ice cream for breakfast, he drank beer for lunch, when he was injured he blew up like a whale. But a player Oh, beautiful, beautiful.'

Beautiful: Dino Zoff (left) remembers Gascoigne with some fondess

In four years at Lazio, Gascoigne scored only six goals, playing fewer than 50 times.

But he is cherished, as Manzini's reaction proves. 'Sometimes I wonder how it would have worked out if I'd gone out there,' said Roeder.

'But I don't know. Gazza seemed to have his best periods in Italy when he was left alone to concentrate on his football, without family and friends going over for a holiday and behaving like they were on a holiday.

'He had games for Lazio where he was top class. It's just a shame we talk about pockets of great play rather than season after season as it should have been.

'He was without doubt the most gifted and by far the most naturally talented footballer this country produced in his generation.'